Just in time for the New Years Eve celebration comes some great booze related news.

As if we didn’t already know that alcohol was the greatest thing since, well anything. Now its even better because “moderate” alcohol consumption may help boost your immune system and fight off infection.

Now the test subjects weren’t really people, they were rhesus macaques, which apparently is a type of monkey that have an immune system very similar to humans.

Not a rhesus macaques, but it is a monkey drinking Fosters — Australian for beer.

To find out how booze is even more awesome then we already thought, researchers vaccinated monkeys against smallpox and then separated them into two groups. The first group with 4% ethanol in their cages and the second with sugar water. All the lab monkeys has access to regular fresh water and food as well and they were monitored for 14 months.

Of course some of the caged monkeys drank more than others. The heavy drinking monkeys showed less of a response to the vaccine compared to monkeys who drank sugar water. While the monkeys who drank in “moderation” showed better responses to the vaccine compared to those who drank the water.